It's not as easy to spot a pirate as it used to be. The first time you laid eyes on Captain Hook you knew you were dealing with a pirate. Maybe it was the black flag. Maybe it was his motley crew. Now times have changed. Today pirates wear finely tailored suits. Or they lurk in a manufacturing facility in their garage. Yet a common thread binds today's pirates to their historic comrades—they seek to profit from other people's work and creativity. They remain common thieves.
Pirates (including counterfeiters and bootleggers) annually rob industry in the order of tens of billions. These losses are projected to double in the near future, particularly in today's digital world. Compact discs (CDs), digital versatile discs (DVDs) and other recording media are easy prey. They can be massively reproduced with over-the-counter computer equipment. Similarly, media packaging (e.g., art jackets or labels) is easily counterfeited using sophisticated, yet low-cost printers.
The consumer bares the brunt of counterfeiting and piracy. Many consumers purchase sub-par goods thinking that they are genuine. Consumers who purchase counterfeit DVDs or CDs can end up with low fidelity products or blank tracks.
A solution is needed to effectively combat piracy.
Digital watermarking provides a solution. Digital watermarking technology, a form of steganography, encompasses a great variety of techniques by which plural bits of digital data are hidden in some other object, preferably without leaving human-apparent evidence of alteration.
Digital watermarking may be used to modify media content to embed a machine-readable code into the media content. The media may be modified such that the embedded code is imperceptible or nearly imperceptible to the user, yet may be detected through an automated detection process.
Most commonly, digital watermarking is applied to media signals such as images, audio, and video signals. However, it may also be applied to other types of media, including documents (e.g., through line, word or character shifting, texturing, graphics, or backgrounds, etc.), software, multi-dimensional graphics models, and surfaces of objects.
There are many processes by which media can be processed to encode a digital watermark. Some techniques employ very subtle printing, e.g., of fine lines or dots, which has the effect slightly tinting the media (e.g., a white media can be given a lightish-green cast). To the human observer the tinting appears uniform. Computer analyses of scan data from the media, however, reveals slight localized changes, permitting a multi-bit watermark payload to be discerned. Such printing can be by ink jet, dry offset, wet offset, xerography, etc. Other techniques vary the luminance, color qualities, or gain values in a signal to embed a message signal. The literature is full of well-known digital watermarking techniques.
The encoding of a label (or non-data CD side) can encompass artwork or printing on the label, the label's background, a laminate layer applied to the label, surface texture, etc. If a photograph, graphic or image is present, it too can be encoded.
Digital watermarking systems typically have two primary components: an embedding component that embeds the watermark in the media content, and a reading component that detects and reads the embedded watermark. The embedding component embeds a watermark pattern by altering data samples of the media content. The reading component analyzes content to detect whether a watermark pattern is present. In applications where the watermark encodes information, the reading component extracts this information from the detected watermark. Previously mentioned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/503,881, filed Feb. 14, 2000 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,614,914), discloses various encoding and decoding techniques. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,862,260 and 6,122,403 disclose still others. Artisans know many other watermarking techniques.
One form of digital watermarks is a so-called “fragile” watermark. A fragile watermark is designed to be lost, or to degrade predictably, when the data set into which it is embedded is processed in some manner, such as signal processing, compression scanning/printing, etc. A watermark may be made fragile in numerous ways. One form of fragility relies on low watermark amplitude. That is, the strength of the watermark is only marginally above the minimum needed for detection. If any significant fraction of the signal is lost, as typically occurs in photocopying operations, the watermark becomes unreadable. Another form of fragility relies on the watermark's frequency spectrum. High frequencies are typically attenuated in the various sampling operations associated with digital scanning and printing. Even a high amplitude watermark signal can be significantly impaired, and rendered unreadable, by such photocopying operations. (Fragile watermark technology and various applications of such are even further disclosed, e.g., in assignee's U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 09/234,780, 09/433,104, 09/498,223, 60/198,138, 09/562,516, 09/567,405, 09/625,577, 09/645,779, and 60/232,163.).
Commonly assigned U.S. Provisional Patent No. 60/282,205 discloses methods and systems to protect media such as VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs, etc. Media packaging or labels can be embedded with a digital watermark. The digital watermark is used as an identifier to facilitate asset management. Or the watermark can be used to control or regulate access to the media content. In one embodiment, a user shows the packaging or label side of the CD to a digital camera to link to the internet. In another embodiment, the digital watermark is used to verify authenticity of the CD.
Commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/924,402 (published as U.S. Pat. No. 2002-0146146 A1) discloses an inspector network, which allows an inspector to efficiently detect counterfeited goods via a digital watermark identifier.
There is room in the art for additional counterfeit-deterring methods and techniques. Consider pirates who counterfeit product packaging (including labels) and then apply them to illegal media copies. In some cases a pirate can successfully counterfeit various types of digitally watermarked packaging.
An object of the present invention is to provide a digital watermark that offers additional anti-counterfeiting protection. In one embodiment, an inventive digital watermark includes visible effects of a digital optical storage media. Digital optical storage media includes CDs, DVDs (audio and video), Super Audio CDs (“SACDs”), laser discs, mini-discs, and all similar technology. Images, video, audio and/or data (e.g., software, text, etc.) can be stored on such media. For simplicity such media is referred to as a CD. In another embodiment, a digital watermark is imperceptibly embedded on a data side of a CD through pit placement.
An advantage of the present invention is that such a digital watermark is inherently difficult to copy by common recording CD devices and illegitimate production masters used in the mass production of counterfeited CDs. In one embodiment, the inventive digital watermark helps content owners find illegal CD counterfeits, either at the distributor, retailer or user location. In another embodiment, the inventive digital watermark allows an authentic watermarked CD to link via a network to additional content via the watermark—a distinct consumer advantage over counterfeited media. This method is cost effective since the process adds little or no production costs to individual CDs, and only minimal cost to the process of creating the original CD master. Once the glass master is created, each replica CD includes the watermark.
The foregoing and other features and advantages of the present invention will be more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.